If there’s one thing about frugal people is that when the going is well, we laugh them off and when the cash flow is limited, we hold them in awe.
I spoke with an accountant who’s a consulting client and he told me that he just spent what seemed like a outrageous fee to me for the services of a lady who he nick named Mademoiselle Picsou (Scrooge in English).
It turns out that the lady spent three hours with him outlining over a thousand ways to save money.
My initial reaction was to laugh and tell him that he’d been taken for a ride but I first asked what kind of ideas she’d shared.
We went from text message to a phone conversation and came to a realization that the lady should be asking more than she charged the accountant.
On decreasing his electricity bill, she suggested some light bulb brands over the one he’s currently using and even pulled out some research to prove her point. She told him to drop his phone company over another that would benefit him and his type of business. Same thing with the Internet service provider.
She told him how to rearrange his office to save on heating costs. One thing that seemed obvious was to move some book shelves away from the heat sources. The accountant told me that it had been there for more than five years! She also advised him on over twenty ways to use the heating efficiently.
One of the items that made me laugh was when she suggested that the client consider drinking hot water instead of the cold water that he usually takes. Her argument was that since my client who’s an avid athlete and like to keep hydrated, drank water all day long, would get hot and not have to increase his thermostat by much. To her defense, she suggested consulting with a doctor though. A funny idea nevertheless.
But! What really boggled my mind was the recommendations she gave to the account when he goes to see some of his clients. She revisited his entire way of booking appointments going as far as taking traffic into consideration.
She told him how drive and use an optimal level of petrol (such as abiding my the speed limit to make all the traffic lights or what gears to drive in). She even went as far as telling him where and how to park his car so that when he returns, the car’s would not get cold forcing him to waste money on petrol while waiting for his engine to warm up.
I think that by the time the “frugal lady” was done my accountant was confused. But, she left him with pages of checklists on how to implement her advice.
It did not take long for me to realize that all that would lead to some serious savings in the long-term that the accountant could use for other business functions (I suggested PR).
The important lesson here is that the sum of thousands of little things does amount to big things.
I was just reading that the reason why Barack Obama was able to raise more funds than Hilary Clinton in the Democratic race was because, the former first lady relied on her big donors who legally could not give over a certain amount while the Illinois senator relied on small donations from the 800,000-plus people who had signed up on his website. (To all the long tail fans out there, this is their ultimate case study)
